Label:
Sony
Release Date:
07/05/2012

It’s hard to know where the truth ends and the legend begins with
Loveless. There’s so much artifice surrounding the second My
Bloody Valentine album that the iconic shoegazers’ failure to come up with a follow-up in 20 years is almost excusable. Formed by Kevin
Shields and Colm Ó Cíosóig in the early Eighties, by the early Noughties this pioneering four piece would only be referred to via a
tinnitus-induced whisper of critical reverence.

Prior to their 1991 tour de force, My Bloody Valentine had one
disavowed mini-album and the transformative Isn’t Anything to
their name. With Loveless, Shields elevated his exploration of
feedback’s original sin to a place where the primal was firmly a thing
of beauty. Over recording sessions totalling a reported £250,000 the
reclusive genius managed to abandon the coarse anthemics of his
contemporaries Ride and Slowdive for a bittersweet symphony that
remains unparalleled. It’s with a bleak sense of irony that old Kev
must have accepted Sony’s request to trudge back to the studio and
remaster his crowning achievement.

That Shields has attained sweet revenge over his macabre paymasters is
indisputable. If delaying the project for a full four years since its
first reviews
were published wasn’t enough, the lack of dramatic difference between
the original and reissue is an absolute triumph. Having been finessed
in extreme slow motion, the resulting album has neither been polished
to an inch of its life nor been subjected to the Raw Power
treatment of slamming the distortion levels into overload. A cynic might even suggest that My Bloody Valentine’s legacy has only been enhanced by such ineffectual dithering. What’s the point in creating something new when you can further embellish your stratospheric stature of years gone by?

To those unfamiliar with Loveless, you’re in for something of a
treat. The snare roll and subsequent wall of noise that hails the
opening of ‘Only Shallow’ redefined alt-rock at the time and has
utterly withstood popular culture’s subsequent ebbs and flows. Many a
collective toyed with primal howls of distorted instrumentation before
My Bloody Valentine but it’s a testament to their enchanting force
that no-one has come close to impersonating them since. To carve a
deeply affecting LP out of the same wretched sounds usually fit for
three chords and a shouty man with a mohawk clearly takes way too much
time and effort.

Since the whole album is essentially a sound collage with each song
melting into the next, it’s a bit pointless to pick out a few best
bits. The ethereal haze of ‘Blown A Wish’, the wistful crunch of ‘To
Here Knows When’ and the fleeting euphoria of ‘Soon’ are all present
but this is an album to savour from start to finish. One that reveals
a different facet under each wave of its studiously created scuzz.

Naturally, Loveless has its blemishes. ‘Touched’ remains a
curio of flaccid synth and nonsense moans from an aching guitar.
‘Sometimes’ drags its muddy fuzz on for an absolute age. This reissue
even comes with a second bonus disc which is a remaster of the album
from its original master tapes. It sounds nigh on identical to the
first disc.

For a record where so much toil was exacted on smoothing over its
bruises, it’s these disfigurements that make Loveless so
endearing. To claim that My Bloody Valentine went in pursuit of
perfection and found it betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of this
immense band. It’s their flaws which make them so transcendent.